Ayata Lab in Summer 2022

Ayata Lab in Summer 2024

Pinar Ayata

Principal Investigator (August 2020 – present)

Pinar received her BSc in Biological and Biomedical Science from Sabanci University in Turkey, where she was born and raised. During her undergraduate studies, she did summer internships at the German Cancer Research Center and Harvard Medical School. She served both as a Teaching Assistant and a Research Assistant during the final years of her undergraduate studies before embarking on her PhD thesis research in the lab of Dr. Nathaniel Heintz at The Rockefeller University. Here, she focused on understanding the interaction of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine modification and MeCP2 protein, and the pathophysiology of Rett syndrome. Upon completion of her doctoral studies, the joined the lab of Dr. Anne Schaefer at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai for her post-doctoral work. There, her work led to the identification of cerebellar microglia as a subtype of microglia that functionally specialize in the phagocytic clearance of apoptotic neurons. Her work also highlighted the epigenetic mechanisms that maintain the specification of microglial subtypes and their importance in normal brain function. Pinar’s most recent unpublished results from her postdoc reveal subsets of microglia that play opposing roles in in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) progression. She also discovered that transcriptional regulation of the population dynamics of the AD-associated microglia. Pinar’s work has received several awards including the Women and Science Graduate Fellow Award, The Rockefeller University Graduate Fellowship, NARSAD Young Investigator Award, and Robin Chemers Neustein Postdoctoral Award.

Anna Flury

PhD student (September 2022 – present)
Provost’s Pre-Dissertation Science Research Fellowship
Doctoral Student Research Grant (DSRG)
ASRC Private Donor Student Conference Travel Award

Anna is a second-year PhD student in Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology Program. She received a BA in Molecular and Cellular Biology from UC Berkeley in 2019, where she worked in an evolutionary genetics lab with yeast. After that, she went on to work with C. elegans on another evolutionary genetics project as a Research Associate at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

Leen Aljayousi

PhD student (September 2022 – present)
Provost’s Pre-Dissertation Science Research Fellowship

Leen is a second-year PhD student in Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology Program. Her research interest revolves around exploring the role of epigenetic changes on behavior and neurodegenerative disorders. She completed her undergraduate studies in Biology at Al-Quds Bard College in Palestine. There she joined the Palestinian Neuroscience Initiative (PNI) and conducted her undergraduate research on the effects of serotonin transporter haplotypes on rule generalization in healthy individuals. She then continued to work as a research associate in the behavioral neurogenetics unit at the PNI investigating the effects of Dopamine and serotonin SNPs on cognitive functions in humans.

Jack Mechler

PhD student (October 2023 – present)
NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) NanoBioNYC Program Award

Jack is a third-year PhD student in the Biochemistry Program and he is co-mentored with Amedee des Georges at NYU. He did his undergraduate at Saint Lawrence University, where he worked in the Marano lab researching bacterial amyloid proteins. In his PhD studies, he has worked in the lab of his co-mentor Dr. Amedee des Georges, to uncover the structural stories of native membrane protein interaction, to this end, employing cutting-edge techniques in in situ cryo-electron microscopy. He is interested in leveraging these techniques to study the structural components of Alzheimer’s disease. Outside of research, Jack is an avid reader and writer.

Anna Vikatos

Undergraduate student (August 2024-present)

Anna is a third-year Biochemistry major and Psychology minor in the Macaulay Honors Program at CCNY. She is interested in understanding the mechanisms behind neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. During her time at the Bronx High School of Science, she studied vagus nerve anatomy and VNS therapy at the Feinstein Institute. She plans to pursue an MD/PhD to continue her work in neurodegeneration. Outside of academics, Anna enjoys attending concerts and biking around NYC.

Hrutvik Bhavsar

Rotation PhD student (Fall 2024)

Vik is a first-year PhD student in the Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology Program. He graduated with a BSc in Biochemistry from CCNY in 2019, where he worked in a structural biology lab studying DNA replication. He then worked as a technician at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine for two years in an epigenetics lab looking at the role of TET enzymes and gene regulation in embryonic stem cells. Outside the lab, Vik enjoys tending to his garden.

Maryam Aslam

Rotation PhD student (Spring 2025)

Maryam is a first-year Biology Ph.D student in the Molecular & Cellular Development track. She graduated from CMU-Q with a B.S. in Biological Sciences in 2022, where she researched interactions between the extracellular matrix and the focal adhesions of metastatic prostate cancer cells, then worked for two years as a research assistant in a neuro-oncology lab, where she contributed to a study on nociceptive neuronal growth in rheumatoid arthritis. Outside of research, she should really be working on that sweater she keeps saying she’s knitting.

Noelle Gentille

Rotation PhD student (Spring 2025)

Noelle is a first-year PhD student in the CUNY Neuroscience Collaborative program (CNC). She graduated from Barnard College and worked at Columbia University, researching myogenic factors in sea urchins. She then worked with Drs Richard Axel and Thomas Jessell, where she made transgenic mice. She then received her M.A. in Philosophy at Tufts University before starting the master’s program in Cognitive Neuroscience at CUNY. There, she worked in a lab focusing on the role of the Sonic Hedgehog pathway in Parkinson’s Disease and addiction. When she’s not in the lab, she is either reading, running, or drinking far too much coffee.

Former Members & Alumni

Rotation Ph.D. Students

Swastik PG (MCD, Fall 2021)

Erna Mitaishvili (MCD, Fall 2021)

Praveena Naidu (MCD, Spring 2022)

Ezekiel Willerson (CNC, Spring 2022)

Anastassiya (Nastya) Kim (MCD, Fall 2022)

Mitali Bhate (Biochemistry, Spring 2023)

Siaresh Aziz (CNC, Fall 2023)

Denice Moran Ramirez (MCD, Spring 2024)

Reza Lagzian (Biochemistry, Fall 2024)

Noushid Zare (Biochemistry, Fall 2024)

Undergraduate Students

Hannah Tetrault (Summer 2021)

Dvir Avnon-Klein (2021-2023); current: PhD Rockefeller University; Excellence in Neuroscience Research Award, Best General Presentation at the CUNY Graduate Center SciCom Symposium